books you've read !

[saracen16]

Read already:
*Sun Tzu - The Art of War (a 50-page book turned to around 200 pages by pages of commentary
*Karen Armstrong - A History of God (the use of God as a political tool)
*Tons more

Now:
*Ibn Khaldun - The Muqadimah (landmark book about early sociological, economical, and historical studies, written by a closeted colonialist racist and translated by an editor reputed for countless contextual errors; still worth a read, though)

 

[dotnetbeast]

Recently:

Autobiography of Malcolm X
The Fourth K (Mario Puzo is a really good author)

 

[Matfei]

Basically I'd wholeheartedly recommend anything by Wilbur Smith

The series-in-a-series called "The Third Sequence" which takes part in the 1600-1700's is brilliant. The books in this are, in order:

Birds of Prey -> Monsoon -> Blue Horizon -> Triumph of the Sun

It follows a number of generations of the Courtney family starting in the tail end of the Anglo-Dutch war onboard a privateer's vessel. Gets much better from there

His writing style is easy to read, enthralling and packs in alot of detail without becoming ponderous and tiresome. It flows, basically.

Check it out guys!

 

[das_ben]

Iris Radisch - Die Schule der Frauen. I had to read this for my studies - it wasn't a pleasant experience. Radisch's cheap polemics can't hide the fact that her arguments are based on mostly anecdotal evidence and that she's failing at being original and witty through - I'm being serious here - usage of lists that are used so incredibly often that even Alanis Morissette would blush. The few valid points she makes can't diffuse the awful feeling about this book I already had after the first few pages - and, let's be honest, have all been made before.

 

[dragonfliet]

Man I've been slacking on updating here. Read three books in the last two weeks:

Lights Ladder by Christopher Howell

Not a big fan of this poetry. While sometimes it was interesting and amusing, I found many of the metaphors and images to be completely random which made me wonder exactly how much thought is being put into these. Being whimsical is one thing, being random is something completely else. I don't really recommend it, despite some actually good poems.

River of Heaven by Lee Martin

I absolutely love this book. It's about an old gay man who has never come out of the closet with any but the few who have caught him in the act. He is haunted by the death of a young man who was run over by a train when he was 15 and the secret he has shared with his brother. When his brother comes back with secrets of his own, the truth can't help but be dragged into the open. This is a book that is sometimes sentimental, sometimes surprisingly brutal and always beautifully written.

Lee Martin snagged my interest with the pulitzer prize finalist The Bright Forever and his earlier novel Quakertown was equally interesting and arresting. He has really not lost any of his soft touch and edge with River of Heaven and I would whole-heartedly recommend this book to any and everyone.

Chez Nous by Angie Estes

An interesting biological note: I took a poetry class with Angie Estes six and a half years ago. I learned an immense amount about poetry, gained a better appreciation for it and stopped writing poetry entirely.

I had never read any of her poetry before and I was surprised how much I liked it. Her pedagogical methods are very classic, very straight forward, but Angie Estes poetry is very experimental, very disjointed and very beautiful. She references Rita Hayworth and Greek mythology together while weaving in verbal puns and a meandering narrative that comes together like a persuasive essay. I haven't even mentioned yet that this poem relies heavily on French and Italian for the meanings to emerge and makes an almost impossible demand of literary background.

While I certainly do not posses the pedigree of knowledge that Estes does, I found this book of poetry immensely readable because of the whimsical nature, from pop cultural references to verbal puns, and how they are as important to the poems as the intellectual ideas.

We talked about this book in class and it is certainly not for everyone, but I honestly loved it and would recommend that people at least leaf through it at some point in their life if they are in any way interested in poetry. It may not be what everyone is looking for, but it may be for some, like it was for me, a breath of fresh air to give back to poetry the originality, depth and approachability that poetry usually feels devoid of.

Hmm... I think I missed a book, but I'm not really sure. Next is Amy Bloom's collection of stories, which I must say I'm pretty excited about.

~Jason

 

[das_ben]

Mikhail Sholokhov - Tales of the Don. I read this in the German translation. This is a collection of early short stories by the author, and what can I say... it shows. Don't get me wrong, the stories do get the atmosphere of the gritty life of farmers in the Don area during the Russian Civil War across very well, but Sholokhov isn't being particularly subtle about it. Blood from split breasts mixing with the ever-present dust of the soil, cracked skulls releasing pieces of brain (mixing with the dust...!), horses and oxen dying horrible deaths (their blood mixing with the dust...!), the unrelenting sun and the fierce winters, as well as the family members on opposing sides constantly murdering each other do get somewhat repetitious and nauseous after a few stories. That is not to say that there isn't the occasional gem in this collection - it just means that it generally doesn't come close to his later works.

Arthur C. Clarke - 2001: A Space Odyssey (Wikipedia). This one's a science-fiction classic for a reason. Nothing I could say about it hasn't been said before, so I'll just sum things up quickly: Read it if you like science-fiction. Read it if you don't.

Arthur C. Clarke - 2010: Odyssey Two (Wikipedia). While I was hesitant about the retcon employed at first (Clarke changed some story points to fit to the Kubrick movie instead to the first novel), this sequel didn't let me down at all. It continues the Odyssey flawlessly and above all, for the most part believably, and thus ranks right behind the first novel in terms of enjoyability - the only (admittedly minor) part I could have done without is the Starchild's visit to Earth. Looking forward to Odyssey Three.

Peter Handke (Wikipedia) - Eine winterliche Reise zu den Flüssen Donau, Save, Morawa und Drina oder: Gerechtigkeit für Serbien. This essay has sparked a large controversy in Europe back when it was first published and is still affecting the way Handke is perceived today. Drawing a conclusion is not easy - he certainly does have a point and his critique of how Serbia was and is portrayed in the Western media is spot-on; however, the way he brings his arguments across is questionable in some parts. The essay does not reveal any new truths or untruths about the Yugoslavian secession wars but it is still an important work insofar, as that it voices some badly needed dissent over the image of Serbia in Europe.

 

[dragonfliet]

[While I was hesitant about the retcon employed at first (Clarke changed some story points to fit to the Kubrick movie instead to the first novel),

Which is pretty hilarious as the first novel was written in conjunction with the screenplay (instead of screenplay adapted from the book), so the difference shouldn't have even been there in the first place. Oh well.

Big Eyed Afraid by Ericka Dawson-

This book of poetry is written (for the most part) in traditional verse, from rhymed quatrains to sonnets to a modified Villanelle. Despite this formalism, Dawson's voice is so strong that it overrides any sing-songy elements that can often override poetry and forces the reader into reading it dramatically. It jumps from Afro-feminist trendiness to references of classic literature with ease and is so smartly and strongly written that I can't help but recommend it to anyone who cares about poetry at all. A truly astonishing first collection of poems.

The Painter of Battles by some spanish dude whose long name I can't be bothered to look up at the moment (he wrote The Club Dumas if that helps)

Truthfully, this is a great concept. A former war-photographer turned recluse painter is confronted by a former soldier whose picture he had taken who threatens to kill him. Hell yes. From there, it just meanders. They talk, the painter thinks and there is plenty of flashback about his overly perfect ex girlfriend. Yawn. While it is often well written, it is just as often over written, with sentences that just pile on and on and on. I get it, photographers look through viewfinders, move on. Then there is the ending, which is both impossible to follow because of the absurd "closure" the painter gets as well as obvious and predictable, but in a way that isn't inevitable according to how the story SHOULD go. (the difference is that something that is inevitable makes sense as far as the story so far and character so far goes--obvious is that it plays into conventions and if you've seen bad endings before, you'll know where this one is going).

Oh well.

~Jason

 

[Trynant]

bump

Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal

Easily the funniest thing I've read in years. I've laughed out loud on several occasions while reading Lamb while on others I felt genuinely touched. The ending crept up out of nowhere, similar to the last Christopher Moore book I read (You Suck!: A Love Story).

Spoiler

Jew-do

 

[dragonfliet]

The Final Solution by Michael Chabon

While this book is short (130 pages) it's absolutely wonderful. A young, mute German-Jewish boy who carries an African Gray Parrot is fostered with an English family after the end of WWII. The parrot recites a mysterious string of numbers in German, which elicits a lot of interest and ends up with a the parrot stolen and man murdered. The Old Man, a once famous detective known all throughout London known for his brilliant mind at solving murders, happens to live near the boy and decides to help figure it out.

Yeah, it's a mystery, but it's really so much more, as befits Michael Chabon. It's fast to read, very fun and brilliantly writtn. I highly recommend it.

~Jason

 

[pine]

oooh I might look into that.

Since my last post I've read a couple books.

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien

This was a short, easy, and entertaining war novel based on the author's experiences in the Vietnam war. It's a series of short stories which aren't strongly connected to each other besides that they contain most of the same characters and are mostly written from the author's perspective.

There is an overall underlying theme throughout the book, which is that a true and accurate recounting of events in war is difficult and futile; that you can tell truth about war even if you are writing fiction and making stuff up. Throughout the book the author intertwines fiction and truth, occasionally doubling back and admitting that a story you read earlier was mostly or all fiction.

While I enjoyed The Things They Carried quite a bit, I ultimately disagreed with the author's premise about truth in storytelling. My personal conclusion after reading the novel was that true recounting does matter. I can't enjoy a story told as a true story if I know that it might be invented. So I was a bit disappointed overall, but it was still a great book.

The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan

This is from the guy who wrote The Botany of Desire, one of my favorite nonfiction books, so I was expecting something good. I got something great. The Omnivore's Dilemma is a lucid, brilliantly-presented indictment of our industrial food system - a system which bases itself completely on the logic of industrial economics rather than human and environmental health. But not only that, the book also presents a strong positive counter-example to our unhealthy food system that, in many ways, makes a lot more sense.

EVERYBODY should read this book. I learned a huge amount of interesting stuff from it and the Pollan is such a good writer, it was endlessly entertaining to read as well.

I also read....

The Princess Bride "good parts" version - Abridged by William Goldman (original by S. Morgenstern)

Apparently the original version of this book was insanely long and had tons of uninteresting stuff, but William Goldman as a child had it read to him by his father who cut out all the boring stuff, and then he got a bee in his bonnet to release this classic story in a more readable format.

It's pretty good, not a real difficult read, but to be honest I felt like Goldman kind of missed the point of Morgenstern's original. Yeah, it has lots of high adventure and love and all that, but the entire book is a satire, and even the high adventure and love and all that is written in an ironic and satirical way that sort of detracts from its believability as an adventure story. For irony and satire I'd probably want to have read the full version, even with the long boring descriptions of clothes and family lineages, and for an adventure story I would probably choose something else.

edit: ok, so I just looked at wikipedia and apparently the whole story about the book being an abridgment is a lie, it actually was written by William Goldman and none of the parts he claims to have cut out ever existed! Interestingly, this suddenly makes me like it a lot more, and kind of for the same reasons that I didn't quite enjoy The Things They Carried.

 

[dragonfliet]

While I enjoyed The Things They Carried quite a bit, I ultimately disagreed with the author's premise about truth in storytelling. My personal conclusion after reading the novel was that true recounting does matter. I can't enjoy a story told as a true story if I know that it might be invented. So I was a bit disappointed overall, but it was still a great book.

I think that you are missing the point a little bit. There is no doubt that The Things They Carried is a work of fiction, but it is fiction only in so much as the stories are invented, but the things are true to the facts of the war. A better way to think of it is thinking of Saving Private Ryan. The movie is wholly fictional, but it tells of true things (if you will). This kind of a situation did occur, there were people like this that underwent situations such as those portrayed in the movie. So it is not a true story, but it is true to the story.

A book REALLY worth posing this question to (and a book worth reading) is What is the What by Dave Eggars. It is the true story of a real person (who has an introduction in the book), but it is also fictionalized, and so it is a novel. THAT can be a little maddening because you want to know what is true and what isn't, but at the same time, it is so true to the life of the man that it makes sense. (of course, I right away went and read some non-fiction of the Sudanese civil war, but that's another point).

~Jason

 

[das_ben]

Gentry Lee & Arthur C. Clarke - The Garden of Rama (Wikipedia). This one started out awfully, and by awfully I mean extremely boring. Carrying on the soap opera-esque relations between the characters of the first sequel instead of the sense of wonder and exploration of the original novel again, the first part of the story dramatically fails/fails dramatically. Once the new settlers from Earth get involved though, things definitely pick up and the novel turns more and more into the description of a potential utopia slipping into chaos because of malice and ambition being inherent in humans. This is not exactly an original theme (especially in science-fiction) though, so this should only be interesting to those immersed in the Rama series - or those (like me) unwilling to break it off in the middle.

Bora Ćosić - My Family's Role in the World Revolution (brief summary). I read this in the German translation. After getting used to the very unusual style - it resembles a flow of thought that jumps from topic to topic very fast, combining important historic events with banalities - I had lots of fun with this small book. It's very humorous (and quite insane at times) but especially towards the end it becomes more and more subversive, which is why it got banned in Yugoslavia. Definitely worth reading.

 

[TossMonkey]

I've just bought this.

I hope Lovecraft is as good as people say it is. Either way it'll look hella nice on my bookshelf.

 

[dragonfliet]

I've just bought this.

I hope Lovecraft is as good as people say it is. Either way it'll look hella nice on my bookshelf.

You know, I've never read any Lovecraft. Always meant to.

Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing by Margaret Atwood.
Goodness this was a scholarly book. There are like 7 pages of bibliography for a 180 page book! I happen to really enjoy reading about writing, because every writer has such a distinct outlook on it. This book collect a lot of different ideas and tries to get an overall grip on why people write and how they write (do not confuse this with a how-to book, however), and succeeds in providing a lot of interesting tidbits, even if it reads a bit dryly.

~Jason

 

[TossMonkey]

You know, I've never read any Lovecraft. Always meant to.

I read it last night for a couple hours before I went to bed. I ended up having the most ****ed up dreams of all time...

 

[dragonfliet]

Daisy Kutter: The Last Train by Kazu Kibuishi
Well told, well drawn, and interesting. It is a swashbuckling wildwest-steampunk affair with massive shotguns, security robots, train heists, poker playing and even a romantic thread or two. Sure, this book falls about fifty pages short of where it should, with standard tropes acting as stand-ins for for actual character development, but it still satisfies nonetheless.

~Jason

 

[Mr. UglyPants]

A Little History of the world By E. H. Gombrich

A great book for anyone, whether your a complete novice at history, or are an avid historian 'A little history of the world' is terrific, a fun read and if you don't already know the basics of history... you might just learn something.

 

[dragonfliet]

Self-Help by Lorrie Moore

Lorrie Moore is brilliant. There just isn't another way for me to say it. She writes beautifully and passionately and just as often darkly and ironically. This collection of short stories touches on death, insanity, cheating, relationship paranoia, writing, etc., etc.

From "How to be an Other Woman" 'When you were six you thought mistress meant to put your shoes on the wrong feet. Now you are older and know it can mean many things, but essentially it means to put your shoes on the wrong feet.'

From "How to be a Writer" 'Decide that you like college life. In your dorm you meet many nice people. Some are smarter than you. And some, you notice, are dumber than you. You will continue, unfortunately, to view the world in exactly these terms for the rest of your life.'

From "Go this way" 'When I told Elliot (the husband--my note) of my suicide we were in the kitchen bitching about the grease in the oven. Funny, I had planned on telling him a little differently than No one has ****ing cleaned this ****hole in weeks Elliott I have something to tell you. It wasn't exactly Edna Millay'

Please, please God, everyone read this book.

~Jason

 

[das_ben]

Ian McEwan - Saturday (Wikipedia). I finally got around to read this much-hyped novel and I can't say I regret it. The strongest point of it certainly are the characters, or better said the character. Through him McEwan manages to convey the fears and doubts of the upper middle class in the occident since the start of the new decade, as well as the sharp contrasts in Western society itself. I can only recommend this book to everyone, I found it to be outstanding.

Arthur C. Clarke - 2061: Odyssey Three (Wikipedia). This is a good sequel, but stays far from the brilliance of the first two Odyssey novels. Only really worth reading if you're into science fiction.

Arthur C. Clarke - 3001: The Final Odyssey (Wikipedia). Better than Odyssey Three, but also not exceptional. The way a former character is brought back seems a little cheap (worse than how Bowman has been brought back before), as well as the ending, which maybe should have been extended and explained a little better.

 

[NeoNite]

I am legend - Richard matheson:

And once again, not surprisingly, the book triumphs over the movie.

I really became part of the story, felt the anxiety/fear/depression/constant mood swings/despair/happiness etc. etc. of the main character.

What would you do if you were supposedly the last living human on the face of this planet, and how long could you manage before you cave into the pressure, the overwhelming feeling of utter loneliness. The crushing weight of solitude and a seemingly endless repetitive existence...and for what?

Excellent.